A fellow Fulbrighter recently had an article published about Trincomalee, Pockets of Optimism in Trincomalee. Here is an excerpt:

Sri Lanka, the geographic teardrop falling just south of the Indian subcontinent, is fabled among tourists as a land of untrodden beaches, jasmine-scented temples, and tea plantations that recall a bygone era when Britain ruled the waves. Alternatively, journalists and academics know Sri Lanka as a hotbed of human rights abuses and ossifying authoritarianism. The ethnic conflict for which the island is most famous pitted the majority Sinhalese against the minority Tamils, but the country’s larger history reveals a saga of haves versus have-nots, with violent undercurrents running both between and within ethnicities, religious groups, and social classes. Though the war officially ended in 2009, the peace of the past four years has been tentative at best.